Author Topic: Iceland drills hottest hole to tap into energy of molten magma  (Read 1075 times)

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Offline thackney

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Iceland drills hottest hole to tap into energy of molten magma
« on: October 21, 2016, 12:04:35 pm »
Iceland drills hottest hole to tap into energy of molten magma
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2109872-iceland-drills-hottest-hole-to-tap-into-energy-of-molten-magma
21 October 2016


Drilling into hot rocks to tap geothermal energy is one thing. Drilling deep enough to tap the energy from magma oozing into volcanoes is quite another, offering a massive increase in the potential to exploit Earth’s inner heat.

That is the task of a rig now drilling 5 kilometres into the rugged landscape of old lava flows in Reykjanes, at the south-west corner of Iceland. Drilling began on 12 August.

By the end of the year, the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) hopes to have created the hottest hole in the world, hitting temperatures anywhere between 400 and 1000 °C.

The drilling will penetrate a landward extension of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge – a major boundary between Earth’s tectonic plates – says Albert Albertsson, assistant director of HS Orka, an Icelandic geothermal-energy company involved in the project. At that depth, magma that moves from below through volcanic activity meets and heats seawater that has penetrated beneath the ocean bed.

“People have drilled into hard rock at this depth, but never before into a fluid system like this,” says Albertsson.  He says the team could find the landward equivalent of “black smokers”, hot underwater springs along the ridge saturated with minerals such as gold, silver and lithium.

At that depth, pressures are high, too – at more than 200 times atmospheric levels.  The consortium of energy companies and researchers behind the project expects the water to be in the form of “supercritical steam”, which is neither liquid nor gas and holds much more heat energy than either.

A well that can successfully tap into such steam could have an energy capacity of 50 megawatts, compared to the 5 MW of a typical geothermal well, says Albertsson. This would mean some 50,000 homes could be powered, versus 5,000 from a single well....
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Offline GtHawk

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Re: Iceland drills hottest hole to tap into energy of molten magma
« Reply #1 on: October 21, 2016, 10:18:13 pm »
Not quite the same but you get the idea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHtZ6Ixeqvs

Offline dfwgator

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Re: Iceland drills hottest hole to tap into energy of molten magma
« Reply #2 on: October 21, 2016, 10:38:41 pm »